Leaving the mall
The only object I still possess from living in the mall is this Swiss Army Leatherman. Recently, I bought this silver skirt by Rachel Comey to wear to the premiere of the documentary because it reminds me both of the “bed” we furnished out of insulation tiles and the emergency blankets we used to counter the cold and damp. And these are some books I fell in love with when studying urban design after leaving the mall.
“A poetic act is an act without possession.”
- Francis Alÿs, artist & architect
For four days in 2004, I lived in the Providence Place Mall with four friends. This temporary residency evolved into a four-year project with seven friends to build a permanent apartment in an unused cavern inside the mall — a hideout in the southern abdomen of the 1.5 million-square-foot commercial beast.
For those first few days, I grazed on food-court scraps and tea from Barnes & Noble, groomed myself with sample products from Origins, and rested on a makeshift bed of insulation tiles left over from the mall’s construction. The idea was to subsist on the mall itself — as if it were our new nature. As if inside had become outside and shopping were living. I tried on every outfit at Bebe and drew an inventory of kitchen tools at Crate & Barrel, letting each object gently rest in my hand before noting its price and post-apocalyptic utility. It felt both entirely weary and wild. The City had furnished a $208 million tax break to build the behemoth, so was not at least 35% of the mall public space?*
Pieces of my story are in a new documentary, Secret Mall Apartment and in some ways, the film preserves much of the enigmatic nature of the apartment itself. People (mostly women) have written me with questions. So here are a few answers.
Q: Where did your fascination for shopping malls come from?
At 10 years old, I was the youngest client of the Neiman Marcus Salon at the Westchester Mall in White Plains. My mom would pull me out of school to have my hair highlighted and permed (Juliano, the master colorist, didn’t work weekends). Growing up in a mixed-race, immigrant family, there was a lot of pressure placed on my appearance — my parents wanted me to look “American” and “upper-middle class.” They thought this was the best strategy for my success and I didn’t challenge this framework until I moved away to college. As a kid, the mall was like a church or temple — a pristine epicenter where I could apprentice myself to different brands and try on desired identities. I spent a lot of money at Banana Republic, J.Crew, J.Jill, Coach, Crabtree & Evelyn, Ann Taylor, Anthropologie, Ralph Lauren. And I went to worship at Tiffany’s, Bloomingdales, Takashimaya, Berdorf’s, Henri Bendel, Saks. The film mentions the “shield of White privilege” that the apartment team operated within. These old commercial haunts helped train me to pass as “White” and more affluent, when neither were true. I reflect more on racial and ethnic identities, colonial legacies, and the concept of “honorary whiteness” in this piece.
For the first four days at the mall, I had $20 and a notebook. I drank herbal tea at Barnes & Noble and received a free dust mask at a nail salon. I didn’t have a phone then, but I have one now — a Light Phone 2, which almost has the same limited capabilities of feature phones from 2004.
Q: How old were you when you lived in the mall?
I was 22 years old when I met Michael Townsend in my senior year at Brown. He was an instructor at RISD and I spotted a flyer for his course on public art and activism on a building in downtown Providence. I joined the class one week late after making a special request in blue ballpoint pen on a carbon copy form at the Brown registrar’s office. The course focused on the mill buildings of West Providence: their current destruction and planned demolition, and the role of artists in preservation efforts. My class project was based on the volunteer work I was doing in the mill district with immigrant families — teaching classes at the public library. After I graduated, I stayed in Providence. I was 24 when I started dating Mike and when we first lived in the mall.
Q: How did you make money?
I had a few different jobs after I graduated. I fundraised about $200K to create a community organization called English for Action (building from the volunteer work I did as a student). My annual salary ranged between $19–25K depending on the organization’s budget each year. I had an office at the Atlantic Mills (where tenants have recently been evicted as new development plans are underway). We offered inclusive and people-centered language classes with a focus civic engagement and personal empowerment. We served about 200 families every year. I led the organization for three years and it went on to exist and evolve for another 19 years until Trump 1.0 data collection and anti-immigrant polices made it unsafe to continue operations.
Later on, I worked as a part-time assistant on photoshoots for home decore magazines and clothing catalogs. My day rate was $200–250, which felt like A LOT at the time. If I worked 5–10 days out of the month, then I had enough to pay for our living expenses and a big Trader Joes haul to feed our friends working on tape art. Ironically, my day job was in the business of fueling the desire to consume. I would pack U-Hauls with furniture, props, flowers, food, etc. to create aspirational scenes to sell clothing and home goods — the kinds of products sold at the mall itself. And in an alternative version of styling, Mike and friends packed U-Hauls to move in large furniture and supplies to the secret mall apartment.
Snapshots of some of my favorite urbanism books and the original and then remixed “Defining You” ad campaign, circa 2007 (photo by Dianna Whitten). When I officially broke up with Mike in 2007, I handed him back my key to the mall apartment. This key covered in flames is a new copy he made for me in 2025.
Q: What kind of art did you make?
I used the skills I learned in styling and some of the Photoshop skills I picked up from volunteering on tape art projects to experiment with “critiques through hyper-conformity.” I recreated the “Defining You” ads that were at the Providence Place Mall at the time of the apartment. I bought everything from the mall, staged the photos, and then returned everything. It was about $1,000 to get everything I needed to match the ad. It was a good exercise in proving how the math does not work when you try to achieve that kind of perfection — maybe only for the one percent. I made apron dresses and bras from IKEA bags — a jab at the consumerist persona of the ideal woman being a shopper. I collaborated with my friend, Liz Kueneke, on a fabric map where people could embroider their memories and feelings on gentrification. I was into psychogeography and situationalism. I also liked to make work that made impersonal technologies personal. I received grants to better understand how malls were privatizing public spaces and shaping culture in cities like Beirut, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Dubai.
Q: Where were you when the apartment was busted?
Two years into the mall project, I moved to New York City. I had been contemplating getting a job at the cheese section of Whole Foods as a way to get health insurance. And then a very good friend took me out to lunch and encouraged me to instead, apply to grad school. I decided to study international development, first at the New School and a little later, I studied city design at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I was interested in how power shapes space and then how space shapes us and our collective future. I wanted to find alternatives to the neocolonial ways of contemporary real estate developers and learn how to be a community-centered urbanist. I was part of a team at LSE Cities focused on valuing the contributions of immigrant and refugee small businesses and I made a game for urban planners to better value informal economies in London. Later, I worked at design firms focused on inclusive urban development, Openbox and 3x3, and I currently am an inclusive research advisor at SOUR.
Q: Do your parents know you lived in the mall?
Not really. Two weeks ago, my mom called me and asked what I was doing that weekend. I mentioned going to Rhode Island for a film screening and that I was kind of in the film. She went on to talk about how beautiful Newport is and then I had to hang up. I don’t really want her to see the movie because it has a few nice pieces of furniture that she handed down to me, which Mike shuffled from our actual home into the mall apartment. (While I do think the colonial-style furniture actually looked better at the mall apartment in juxtaposition with the brutalist cinderblocks, I’m not sure my mom would agree.) My dad died two years ago and I never told him the story. I don’t think he would have found it very charming.
Q: The Providence Place Mall is under financial duress and needs a business plan — what should the Mall do?
My dear friend, Nicolás Palominos, used to say to me when we were in the studio at LSE and evaluating absurd urban development plans, “Reality always overcomes the plan.” I think the new mall owners should do what the first owners should have done: engage with the reality of the neighborhood, people, and Providence at large. This would entail partnering with community organizations and other local stakeholders to co-design a mixed-use, community-centered, and inclusive redevelopment plan that is financially and environmentally sustainable, and that includes affordable housing and space for local businesses.
Q: You invited your therapist to be your +1 at the NYC premiere — what did he think of the movie?
As a human, he thought it was a good movie. As a therapist, he thought that the secret apartment symbolized the impregnation of a womb (i.e. insertion of large objects into narrow, dark cracks); the creation of life where it was not intended to be born; the invitation of select admirers into the womb; the eventual abandonment of the secret child.
Q: Do you have a favorite review of the film?
Yes, this one from Letterbxd. Thanks, abe :)
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If you have more questions about race, gender, power, cities or how I went to the bathroom (people always ask about the bathroom situation), you can reach me here < 3
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*The mall’s total construction cost was approximately $500 million. Taxpayers contributed $208 million, approximately 35% of the total cost. Based on this proportion, around 525,000 square feet could be devoted to the public good.
